Our first week back at school

It was exciting to return to school and find out how our veggies had grown during the holidays. We found some huge zucchinis, our giant pumpkins and edible pumpkins are coming along nicely, we have lots of herbs growing well and we will soon have crops of tomatoes and corn to harvest.

Cameron harvested some herbs

Liam harvested some carrots

Ellen used scissors to harvest some chives for the curried eggs



Checking out the giant pumpkin



It was very warm this week so there was watering to be done - very popular on warm sunny days!

William watered the corn

Jacob watered the tomatoes

Jobe unravelled the hose

As well as harvesting each garden group completes a task such as watering, maintenance, composting, weather recording and inspecting our new garden. Josie did a good job completing the weather board on Thursday and Jacob was a great help measuring the soil temperature.

Each group gets a list of jobs to do and visuals showing what they need to harvest

Josie took charge of the weather board

Jacob measured the soil temperature

When it rains and we can't get out to the garden we complete various activities inside such as paper shredding, journal writing and working on a mosaic table. Whilst there was no rain about this week, Sam spent time inspecting the table - it will be good to get it completed this year!

Our new garden is progressing and students enjoyed exploring it this week. Our giant pumpkins are growing in the new garden. Fruit trees are doing well, with one or two fruits on some and we also have some zucchinis, tomatoes and potatoes growing.

The chicken house is nearly finished!

We are running the program five days a week this year and are including eleven classes. Some students started on our program on their first day at our school on Tuesday - what a lovely start to find yourself in a beautiful garden and then have the chance to do some cooking and to eat a delicious lunch!

Our menu this week was:

Pizza Margherita

Pasta with Zucchini and Garlic

Stir-fried greens with honey, soy and sesame seeds

Salad of the Imagination

Curried Eggs

The pizza was really delicious!

And the curried eggs continued to be a great favorite!

We purchased three mandolin slicers in the holidays. Last term we trialled two models, one that had a safety handle which had to be pulled back in order for the sharp slicing blade to be exposed and one that had a guard which held the food to be sliced on the slicing track. Both of these properties were considered to be of value for our students. A big search took place in the holidays to find a mandolin that had both properties. Eventually a model was found, but it was only available in the UK or USA!! After much internet searching the cheapest mandolin was found in a shop in Scotland!! We have trialled the mandolins this week and they appear to be providing us with a solution to the issue of finding safe ways for our students to chop and slice. We produced some matchstick thin carrot chips this week and sliced our tomatoes and onions incredibly thinly. The machines were great fun too!

Liam made zucchini chips for the stir fry

Same made carrot chips for the salad



The machine was very interesting!



We will be starting new menus each Tuesday.

Next weeks new menu is:

Zucchini and Caramelised Onion Pizza

Pasta with a Creamed Spinach Sauce

Thai Carrot Salad

Mandarin and Almond Salad

Mini Frittatas

How did we come up with this menu? Well, zucchinis are readily available at present as is spinach; we were given a lot of carrots and mandarins and we are including an egg dish each week in our first five week block.

There were lots of photos that I could not include in this blog this week as I am still waiting to check permission for publicity documents for many of our new students. Hopefully I will be able to publish more next week.

And here are a selection of photos taken in the kitchen:

Jacob dry roasted the sesame seeds that would be a garnish for the stir-fry



Patrick made pasta



Regan used the mandolin slicer to slice tomatoes for the pizza



Jack grated the zucchini (a very big one!) for the pasta sauce



Rochelle grated cheese for the pizza



And what a great final photo - a new student enjoying his first Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program Meal!





Our final kitchen-garden class for 2012

We had a lovely lunch today -

Pumpkin, Currant and Quinoa Salad

Christmas Tree Pizza

Christmas Vegetable Pasta

Tuna and Walnut Dip

Hummus

Raw Christmas Vegetables

Christmas Vegetable Fried Rice



A Christmas Theme

Almost all of our gardening photos show our students watering this week! It certainly has been a priority activity for us with the weather being so warm. We have also completed some work on our compost heap and harvested radishes, salad greens, coriander, parsley, mint and spring onions.



Litiani watering our "Three Sisters Vegetable Bed" (corn, beans and pumpkin)




Darcy enjoyed watering the garden and anyone else that he could catch!




Our Three Sisters - Corn, Pumpkin and Beans




Cameron did a really good job watering the parsely




Jobe watering our leeks




Watering the leeks, coriander and rocket



Our approach of asking each cooking group to choose their own recipes this week has been very successful. It has been an interesting exercise for us to pass the responsibility for choosing the recipes over to others - a little scary at times!! Some staff gave us lists of ingredients, but wouldn't tell us what they wre making!  As the saying goes, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" and we can say without any hesitation that everything tasted delicious!. We have cooked some really tasty foods this week and some of the recipes given to us will definitely be published in our next recipe book. 

The official menu was:

Victorious Vegetables

Perfect Pizza

Pleasing Pasta

Ripper Rice

Super Salad

Interpretations of these dishes have included 'Quinoa, Pumpkin and Currant Salad', 'Christmas Tree Pizza', 'Roasted Carrot, Beetroot and Mint Salad' and 'Curried Banana Salad'. We think we might make this approach a regular end of term activity. It is certainly a good way to collect recipes!



Christmas Tree Pizza




Jackson made a great Christmas Tree Pizza




Very careful carrying to the oven





Jack chose all the ingredients for his salad




Jack 'hopped on' to Tomoko's hand to help with cutting the carrots




"Yes this carrot will be good in my salad"




Great Salad Jack




Ellen was very pleased with this Christmas Salad




Christmas Salad





Josh added pepper to the Christmas vegetable pasta sauce




This was our last week of kitchen and garden classes for the year, next week we will be cleaning, planning and planting.  However I plan to complete a reflection about what we have done this year and will be posting it to the blog in the near future.

More garden progress



Two rainwater tanks sitting in position!



Our water tanks are now in position in the garden! We have a photographic time-line of our garden on display in our gym – when you look at the progress that has occurred since May it is really impressive. Many thanks must go to Michael and Craig for doing so much of this work, but also of course to Rotary Bellerive who are building our chicken house and to all the many staff, parents and students who have also contributed to the workload.

And in the kitchen it we have doubled our baking options by installing a new oven. It is the same type as the one we had previously, but is a double oven. Up until now we have had to use classroom ovens as well as our kitchen one during most sessions. It has made a huge difference to us to be able to do all of our baking in our own kitchen. Many thanks to Mark for organising this for us.

The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation Newsletter was published this week and we were delighted to read their comment about us with regard to our contributions to their web-site called The Shared Table - this is what they wrote:

We would like to specially commend the Southern Support School in Howrah, Tasmania – throughout 2012 we have been inspired by the creativity of the students and staff at this dynamic school.

 We are continuing to work in our small garden too - it will probably provide us with our harvests for the first half of next term as planting in the new garden won't start until January or February. Molesworth Environmental Centre gave us a lovely selection of tomato plants this week:

• Grosse Lisse
• Earle of Edgecombe
• June Pink
• Kellogg's Breakfast
• Wonderlight
• Rouge de Marmande
• Black Cherry
• Tommy Toe
• Black Russian

Cody was a great help with planting the tomato seedlings

We have a good crop of salad greens at the moment - Jacob visited us again and showed that he is going to be a real asset when he joins us next year:

Leeks, radishes, salad greens, carrots and coriander



This week we cooked:                                                                          

Cauliflower Fritters

Leafy Green Salad

Broccoli Cheese

Thai Carrot Salad

Potato Gnocchi with Silverbeet and Ricotta

We seem to say it frequently, but this really was one of our better menus!!

The cauliflower fritters seemed to vanish before they even got to the table!



Mixing the batter for the fritters









For some reason we took fewer photos this week, perhaps we were too busy enjoying ourselves! Here is a photo of Ellen grating cheese for the gnocchi:

A skill that has developed well this year has been the use of our hands to mix foods - it has resulted in us learning to be very gentle with food. At the start of the year our leafy green salads tended to be a little bruised by the time they reached the table - now they are just about perfect!!




Very gentle hand mixing by Jobe





Rochelle and Jobe made a delicious leafy green salad



Jobe carried a bowl of water to the table to wash the salad leaves

Getting ready to start

Next week will be our final week of kitchen and garden classes (during the final week of term we will be cleaning, sorting, tidying, planning and planting!). We decided to do something slightly different for our last week and so sent this note to staff:

"

Dear ....................

Next week we are going to have a bit of fun in the kitchen (we hope!!).

Our menu is set out below:

Victorious Vegetables

Perfect Pizza

Pleasing Pasta

Ripper Rice

Super Salad

Your group will be cooking …………………………….and you are absolutely free to choose what you would like to cook so long as it fits the title:

     You can arrive on the day, check out what we have available to cook and come up with a recipe - OR

      you can choose a recipe in advance and tell me by Friday  what ingredients you would like - OR

      you can tell me by Friday if you would like me to choose a recipe for you

Please do not stress about this, any of the options are fine!"

We have already received some great recipes that staff want to cook - many with a Christmas theme. Watch out for the Christmas Tree Pasta that Nadine is planning!!